Apparently Maddie was trying to befriend the hostile little fiend.
The old lady stepped out on the porch and called, “Spike! Come inside, sweetums, I’ve made your breakfast!”
The dog, presumably Spike, trotted out of the rosebushes, through the fence, and up to its owner, who held onto the porch railing, laboriously leaned down, picked up the dog, and carried it inside.
More light brightened the sky.
The house on the corner, the one with the Dogwood Blossom Historical Neighborhood sign, lit up. The shades on the kitchen windows were raised, and he caught a glimpse of a dimple-cheeked darling of a woman with dyed ash-blond hair, a wholesome demeanor, and a cheerful pink bathrobe. In the background, he could see a small dining area with flowered teapots wallpaper.
She looked out, admired her yard, nodded with pleasure, and turned away.
Obviously she hadn’t yet spotted the dog poop.
Across the street and toward the west, lights came on, a woman’s voice called, children answered, a man grumped. The father came out first, dressed for work, two grade-school-age kids trailing him. They got in the car parked in the driveway, waved at the mother, and drove off. Next the mother came out, dressed for work, carrying a toddler. She tucked the kid into the car seat and left.
They looked normal. So the street wasn’t full of only retirees and crazy people.
The tiny house on the other side of Maddie—it looked identical to his, except recently painted—remained silent and dark. Whoever it was either wasn’t awake yet or wasn’t home.
Jacob stood. The sun was up. The light hurt his eyes. He had to get out of here before someone saw him. In the bedroom, darkness—and pain—awaited.
* * *
Someone knocked.
Jacob’s eyes slammed open.
Where was he? What was he seeing? Had he been asleep?
No. No sleep. The nightmares came when he slept … only they weren’t nightmares. They were the truth.
Someone knocked. Again. On his door. His bedroom door. In Virtue Falls. In his wrecked house.
“Goddamn it.” He spaced the word carefully, making each syllable count. Bracing his back against the wall, he inched up off the floor and out of the corner where he had crouched for the past however many hours. “Goddamn it,” he said again. How goddamn many people did he have to talk to in one twenty-four-hour period?
He jerked open the door and caught some guy in jeans and a work shirt with his fist upraised, about to knock again. “What?” Jacob snapped.
The guy dropped his hand and backed away. “Hey, Mr. Denisov, I’m Berk Moore. I’m the contractor Mr. Wodzicki sent to bid on your repairs.”
“Fine. Do it.” Jacob turned away.
Moore said, “I have to ask you some questions.”
Jacob paused. “Why?”
“Because I need to know what you want me to do … beyond the obvious, I mean.”
“Fix. The. House.”
“It’s not possible to fix it exactly like it was.” Moore spoke quickly, trying to keep Jacob with him. “Most of the building materials used in this house—in any house built in the twenties—are no longer available. So we’ll have to use substitutes. Plus modern building codes are different. Plus you might want upgrades.”
“No.”
“Plus, you know”—Berk waved a hand vaguely at the floor—“this linoleum hasn’t been used since the sixties and you’ll have to pick out new floor coverings to, um—” Jacob may have been glaring, because Berk backed up a little farther. “Really, I have to consult with you about at least some of the items.”
“Use your judgment.” Jacob started to close the door.
Moore stuck his foot in there.
Damned good thing Berk had work boots on or Jacob would have crushed him like a bug.
“I wouldn’t bother you if I didn’t have to, and I get it. I’m a veteran, too. Two tours in Afghanistan. Got a belly wound that got me discharged.” Berk Moore tugged his shirt out of his belt and displayed the puckered pink scar. “The insurance won’t pay unless I get work orders signed by you. Please, have a heart.”
Don’t appeal to me as a fellow soldier. Just … don’t. “Come back at night when it’s not so bright.”
The guy glanced behind him at the sunlit street. “I’m here now. How ’bout I give you my sunglasses?”
Right. Sunglasses would protect Jacob’s eyes from the vicious light … and give him something to hide behind. “Yeah.”
Moore took off his aviators and handed them over.
Jacob put them on and stepped into his kitchen. “Looks worse in the daylight.”
“Maddie might have done you a favor. Blow some of the old-house-stink away.” When Moore realized what he’d said, he looked alarmed. “Not that I’m saying your house stinks. No more than most old houses on the coast.”
Jacob never washed his clothes. He didn’t shower. If something smelled around here, it was him.
Moore talked faster. “The house was due for a remodel, anyway, and this will improve your chances of resale.”
“I’m not going to sell it.” But his mother would, and she would be glad to off-load it quickly. One less thing for Jacob to feel guilty about.
“Right. Don’t blame you. Good location. Okay, for starters, we got to talk electrical. The wiring in the house is ancient. It all has to be changed out.”
Jacob grunted. He’d figured that, by the way the responding firefighters had got the power off so fast.
“We’ll do that first, but meantime, you’ve got no power. The cops told me you want to stay here. Mr. Wodzicki said he’d spring for the cost of a hotel room.”
Jacob could hardly speak for loathing. “That prick.”
“Okay, so you’re going to stay here.” Moore made a note on his clipboard. “I’ll throw every electrician I can find at the project. Now, about the structure in the house and porch. The whole thing was built to last, obviously, or—”
A shriek from across the street stopped Moore in his tracks.
Jacob sighed. Not again.
The two men walked cautiously toward the front of the house.
But it wasn’t Maddie. This time, the dimple-cheeked darling from the house on the corner stood on her lawn examining the sole of her shoe. She gave another sharp, angry shriek, then whirled and stormed over to her old lady neighbor’s. She rang the doorbell, then knocked for good measure.
Inside the house, the little dog started yapping.
While Dimples was waiting, she wiped her shoe on the concrete porch and muttered furiously.
“That’s Mrs. Butenschoen. I remodeled her kitchen.” Moore’s tone told Jacob everything he needed to know about Mrs. Butenschoen.
The old lady answered her front door and looked through the screen.
Mrs. Butenschoen started scolding, pointing at her yard, her shoe, the dog.
The old lady was clearly apologetic.
The scolding continued.
The old lady wrung her hands.
Mrs. Butenschoen jerked open the screen door.
Spike darted out, barking wildly, intent on protecting his mistress.
Mrs. Butenschoen stumbled backward, off the front porch, and down the stairs.
Moore cackled. “That’s it, Spike. Take her down.”
The old lady called Spike until he returned to her.
When the old lady held the snarling little beast in her arms, Mrs. Butenschoen announced loudly, “I shall call animal control!” She turned, bosom heaving, and spotted the two men watching.
“Uh-oh.” Moore eased back.
Mrs. Butenschoen tossed her head and continued toward her own house.
When her own screen door slammed behind her, Moore breathed a sigh of relief. “That was a close one. She’s been hunting you ever since you moved in.”
Jacob knew what to blame. “Goddamn war hero crap.”
“It’s not that. I mean, it is, but mostly it’s Mrs. Butenschoen. She knows everything
that goes on in this neighborhood, and she likes to lay down the law according to Butenschoen. No escaping her. She has standards, you know.”
“I don’t give a fuck about her standards.”
“That won’t stop her. You watch. Animal control will be out here issuing a citation to old Mrs. Nyback. Mrs. Nyback will call me, crying, to do something about her fence. I’ll send some guys in to rig up netting between the pickets, and Mrs. Butenschoen will bitch because the netting spoils the pristine appearance of ‘our treasured historic neighborhood.’” Moore used his fingers for air quotes.
Yesterday, Jacob had been alone, in the dark, and he didn’t know one thing about Virtue Falls or his neighbors. Now … he was hearing gossip?
He must have made a sound or a gesture, because Moore jumped and said, “Oh! You want to get done. What was I talking about? Oh, yeah.” He rapped his knuckles on an exposed stud. “This house was built to last or the floor wouldn’t have held the weight of the SUV. All oak studs and beams. Can’t get wood of that quality anymore, price is prohibitive, so I recommend a steel structure. It’ll hold up in the climate and—”
“Fine.”
“Right. Fine.” Moore wrote on the form and passed the clipboard over.
Jacob signed it, and they went on to the next issue.
There were a lot of issues. Windows were single pane. Pipes were copper and fragile. Nothing was to code.
Jacob said, “Fine,” and signed off on everything. Maybe the contractor was padding the job, but Jacob had more experience than most men with government bureaucracy, so when Moore said all this bullshit had to be done to satisfy the building inspectors, Jacob believed him. And signed.
Moore was starting to look less like a mournful basset hound and more like a guy with a hefty profit in his future … when the phone rang.
Moore laughed. “Man, I cannot believe your landline survived this disaster.”
“Answer it.”
The phone rang.
“What? Why?”
The phone rang.
“I came out. I’m signing off on everything. I’m a veteran. Answer it.”
Moore went over to the old-fashioned phone and used his sleeve to brush off the dust. “Who is it?”
The phone rang.
“My mother. Answer it.”
“You bet.” Moore picked up the handset. “Jacob Denisov’s residence. Berk Moore speaking. How may I help you?”
Even from where he stood, Jacob heard his mother squawk.
Moore held the phone away from his ear. When the shouting had quieted, he brought the phone close again. “I’m a local contractor. I’m doing some work on Jacob’s house … Well, Mrs. Denisov, this is an older home and needs repair, so when Jacob had some trouble, he called me in … nothing too serious. Some electrical problems, a mushy feel to the living room floor—”
That was one way to describe the hole Maddie’s tire had put in the hardwood.
“And he wants to open up the front of the house with a couple of new windows.…”
Unwillingly impressed with Moore’s ability to spin spur-of-the-moment half-truths, Jacob leaned against the wall and listened.
Moore scrutinized Jacob. “He looks fine. He’s skinny. Could use a haircut and a shave … Yes, it is hard to believe he used to be clean-cut.…” He glared meaningfully at Jacob. “Can you speak to him?”
Jacob sliced his finger across his own throat.
“Right now, he’s under the kitchen sink dealing with some old pipes.”
Jacob picked up a wrench from Moore’s toolbox and pounded on a shattered piece of plaster that disintegrated under his blows.
“You bet, Mrs. Denisov, I’ll tell him!” Moore hung up.
Jacob ceased pounding. “Thanks.”
“Sooner or later you’re going to have to talk to her.”
“Later.”
“I get it. I really do. I’ve got a mother, too, and when I came back from Afghanistan … God bless her, she meant well.” Absently, Moore rubbed the place over his belly wound. “The only cure for battle hangover is time.”
“Or death.”
Moore gave him one sharp look. “Well, sure. But when you dodge the bullet in battle, it seems surly to seek it out in civilian life. Now, we probably do need to look at the pipes under your kitchen sink.”
Jacob dropped the wrench into Moore’s outstretched hand. “Maddie’s car didn’t get close to the kitchen.”
“Thank God. Can you imagine the mess a broken pipe would have created?” Moore crawled under the sink and rattled around, came out, and wiped his hands on his handkerchief. “You’re due for a major break. We’d better replace what we can while we’ve got light in the crawl space.”
Now Moore was definitely padding the job. But Jacob was grateful to him for answering the phone, so he signed off on that, too.
Both men were squatting by the water heater closet, looking at the corroded connections, when a high, cheerful voice said, “Hello, Mr. Denisov.”
Moore flinched.
Bit by bit Jacob turned his head and looked.
The woman who had been working in her yard when the accident happened, the one with the pink bathrobe, the one with the dog poop on her shoe … was standing behind them holding a pie.
CHAPTER NINE
How had the woman managed to climb through the rubble and remain fresh and clean, the pie tall, pristine, and white with whipped cream?
She was beaming. “Mr. Denisov, I wanted to take this opportunity to welcome you to the neighborhood.” Her bright tone changed to dismissive. “Hello, Berk.”
“Hello, Mrs. Butenschoen,” Berk said weakly.
Jacob rose to his full height.
Moore stayed low.
Mrs. Butenschoen was five-two, 140 pounds. She wore jeans with rhinestones on the pockets, eyeglasses with rhinestones on the corners, and discreet rhinestone earrings. “I made you a howdy-new-neighbor treat.” She offered the pie.
Browned coconut crawled through the cream.
She continued, “My pies are famous in Virtue Falls. Aren’t they, Berk?”
Moore was on his knees, easing away. He froze like a cornered rabbit and muttered, “Famous.”
“I tried to bring a pie over before. More than once, in fact.” She waggled her finger at Jacob. “But you didn’t answer the door.”
“No.” If his door had remained on his house, he still wouldn’t have answered it.
Mrs. Butenschoen took his hand and wrapped it around the ceramic lip of the pie pan.
A section of the crust crumbled.
She looked stricken. “So few people appreciate the work that goes into a real homemade crust.”
He shoved his thumb in. Crust fell like crisp snow.
With a brave lift of the chin, she ignored his antagonism. “But at last I get to meet you, so our little mishap here”—she waved a hand around at his mangled house—“does have at least one happy consequence.”
“Our little mishap?” Jacob stared intimidatingly through Berk Moore’s sunglasses.
“It’s a tragedy, of course, the way Maddie Hewitson causes trouble. She is certainly incorrigible, and possibly venal.”
Moore had scooted far enough out of the line of fire to stand up. “Mr. Denisov, I’ve got enough to start working up a bid, so I’ll head back to the office, then present the bid to Mr. Wodzicki. Shouldn’t be any problem—he said anything the insurance disallowed he would pay for out of his own pocket.”
“That’s so wonderful and kind,” Mrs. Butenschoen chirped.
Jacob’s hostility was undiminished. “That prick.”
“Right,” Moore said. “This afternoon, I’ll get a guy over here to clean up, and I’ll be back tomorrow with the electricians. If I can round up enough generators, I’ll get my crew to work day after tomorrow.”
Jacob moved fast, grabbed Berk’s arm. “How long will this take?”
“Couple of months. Maybe a little less, maybe a little more. Depends on what we
find when we dig into the walls. If there’s mold…” Moore shook his head dolefully.
“Two months.” Jacob grasped Moore’s shoulders firmly enough to make the man wince.
“I’ll do my level best to beat the clock,” Moore assured him.
Mrs. Butenschoen lowered her chin and glared over the top of her glasses. “I’ll keep you to that promise, Berk. We have a nice, clean, normal neighborhood where children play and flowers bloom. We can’t have our street disrupted.”
“I’ll be sure it gets done even if I have to work night and day.” Moore shook off Jacob’s grip. “Keep the sunglasses, man.”
Now Jacob knew how Maddie had felt the day before when he abandoned her. He had seen a sniper with his target in view who looked less determined than Mrs. Butenschoen did at this moment. And a faint memory niggled at him. “You look like someone I know. Someone in black-and-white.” From that old TV sitcom The Andy Griffith Show … He had it! “You look like Aunt Bea.”
It took her a minute to figure out who he was talking about. Then she flushed, and he could see her struggling between outrage and nosiness.
He never had a doubt which one would win.
In a soothing, friendly tone, Mrs. Butenschoen asked, “Why don’t we sit down and have a chat, get to know each other better?”
“No.”
“After all, I own one of the two largest houses in the neighborhood and I feel it’s my obligation to help maintain the quality of appearance we all want for our little bit of Virtue Falls historiana. For instance, did you know—”
“Don’t care.”
“That these houses date back to the days when Virtue Falls was a sawmill town? These smaller houses were built for the sawmill workers, and the larger houses, like mine, were built for the superintendents who—”
“I. Don’t. Care.”
“I was simply explaining why it’s important that we all pull together to maintain trim yards and well-tended homes. I have been caring for your yard. It’s the least I can do for one of our honored veterans, but I thought we could pull together and—” This time she interrupted herself. “Would you look at that?”
Mrs. Butenschoen sounded so indignant, Jacob expected to see another car careening toward him. Or a weed in Mrs. Butenschoen’s flower bed.
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